Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Study reveals extent of Mekong dam food security threat

The planned construction of hydropowered dams on the Mekong River in
South-East Asia could jeopardise livelihoods, water access and food
security for 60 million people, across Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and
Vietnam, according to a study.

The study reports that dams will block fish migration routes and decimate fish supplies in the lower Mekong region.

As
fish dwindle, communities will have to look for alternative sources of
protein, such as livestock and poultry. Raising these will require more
land and water, and be prohibitively expensive.

"People talk about
food security in relation to dams but we need to put the numbers to
what that really means," says Stuart Orr, freshwater manager at World
Wildlife Fund (WWF) International and co-author of the study published
in the October issue of Global Environmental Change.

Orr presented
the study at the Third Mekong Forum on Water, Food and Energy, convened
by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research's
(CGIAR) Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF), in Hanoi, Vietnam,
this month (November 13-14).

Orr says that if all 88 planned dams
were developed, Mekong communities would be faced with sourcing close to
40 per cent of lost fish protein from other sources.

And to
replace fish protein with domestic livestock protein would require up to
63 per cent more pasture lands and up to 17 per cent more water, the
study says.
Article continues at ENN affiliate, Science and Development Network